Obvious in retrospect

So I had a dream the other night, you know the one: some evil guy has the power to make animals attack you, and you have telekinetic powers. Then he sends some dog to attack your girlfriend.

So there I am, watching this dog stalk towards Lauren, and the thing is I can hear the dog’s thoughts, or at least the general shape of its thoughts. It’s aware that it’s being made to do this against its will; it has no desire to harm anyone. Yet still it advances, snarling. I love dogs, and it would break my heart to harm it, but I have to save Lauren no matter what. What am I to do?

I try to reason with the dog, tell it to resist, but it can’t. So I then explain that I’m going to have to kill it, in order to save my girlfriend. I apologise for that fact, since I’m aware that the dog means us no actual harm, and it’s the evil animal-controlling guy who’s doing it all. The dog seems to accept its fate quite stoically. There is a moment of mutual respect and understanding between us; it’s a truly beautiful thing. Then I telekinetically crush the dog’s windpipe, and it drops to the ground. I remember making a crushing motion in the air with my thumb and forefinger as I did it. Sometimes it helps to visualise these things.

Lauren is now safe, since there are no other animals around for the evil guy to control, and I promptly use my telekinetic powers to dispatch him. Then I wake up briefly, and before long I fall asleep again. I think I dreamed about Pie Menus or something.

It’s only later that it occurred to me: I could just have killed that guy before he took control of the dog, or indeed just telekinetically crushed his head or something. I’m guessing that having your head crushed is going to break your psychic control of nearby animals. That just seems to make sense to me.

So the dog died for nothing, and all because of my inability to rationally analyse the situation and realise that some telekinetic head-crushing would have solved all my problems at once. I genuinely regret the unnecessary death of that fictional animal. Random dream-dog, I salute you. Sorry about that.